Santa Monica
by Pickles
Summary: We've all hidden behind what we were supposed to be from time to time, and we all know how much it hurts. Imagine doing that for an entire lifetime.


Hi. Another songfic from me. I know, odd. I feel the need to write them for some reason. I can actually visualise to song lyrics now...  
  
Another depressing Yohji. This one is Savage Garden, whom I fell in love with when I heard "To the Moon & Back", and whom I cannot believe broke up. Tell Darren Hayes to get a brain, people!  
  
This one is "Santa Monica". I really think Yohji lives a life like this, smiling and nodding and functioning like a basic human being on the outside, but lonely, bitter, cold on the inside.  
Rather like Aya, only he doesn't wear the cold for a mask. He'd rather be a bit more personable than that.  
  
Thanks go to Aoe, Shoori, and Yanagi-sen, my own personal goddesses of Schu/Yohji. Thanks, chicas. Don't know what I'd do without being able to read all your wonderful epics. You're not the Three, but you'll do. ^^ Also to Moonflower, who I hope posts this for me. If I finish it in time.  
  
What am I forgetting? Oh yes. Disclaimers. Joy.  
  
Takehito-san, I know I don't own Weiß or its boys. They are your personal babies, even though I'm almost certain I love them more. Please don't sue me for loving your creations. I can't help it. Darren - idiot - Hayes and Daniel Jones own "Santa Monica", another thing I would like to own but don't. Don't sue me either, please. I still love you - even if you are an idiot, Darren.  
  
Am I forgetting something? No, I don't think so. Oh, yes I am. I forgot to say, I think us teens should petition to get the laws changed. We all know about sex. We write about it, for gods' sake. I know you people read it - you read my stuff. And don't tell me half of you are legal. I'm not legally old enough to read the stuff I write, most of it. Violence is what deserves the  
NC-17 rating, not sex. That should be PG-13. Everyone agree? Good.  
  
Speaking of ratings, this is PG for depressive themes. Not enough to make anyone cry, but if it does, lemme know, huh? I DID get tears in my eyes writing parts of it, but only because I understand what Yohji is going through. We've all hidden behind what we were supposed to be from time to time, and we all know how much it hurts. Now imagine doing that for an entire lifetime.  
  
Now that we have that over with... story time, children. Gather round.  
  
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Santa Monica  
  
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//In Santa Monica, in the winter time,  
The lazy streets so undemanding  
I walk into the crowd//  
  
Yohji smiles at the girls as they giggle and take turns getting covert glances at him for no  
apparent reason. He knows what it is like to have a crush, and he would hate to break so many  
young hearts all at once, unlike Aya, his coworker and his teammate, but not his friend. He is a  
worldly man, and it shows in the way he does things. His walk, his attire, his long hair all  
attest to that. He likes to make himself an easily seen, attractive man. He gets more  
opportunities that way to forget what he is, what made him this way, and what he feels about it.  
  
//In Santa Monica, you get your coffee from  
The coolest places on the promenade  
Where people dress just so//  
  
What the girls don't know is that Yohji feels that he is nothing special. Young men like him are  
a dime a dozen; pretty faces, young, strong bodies, clothes that accentuate every feature and  
movement, all of that can be found on the street at any time of day. He has moulded himself, not  
to stick out, but to fit in. A beautiful face is nothing that can't be seen two blocks over, and  
he does not want to be memorable. He wants people to be able to forget him.  
  
Why should they remember him if they do not know who he is?  
  
//Beauty so unavoidable  
Everywhere you turn it's there  
I sit and wonder what am I doing here?//  
  
He goes clubbing for the same reason: to lose himself in the pounding rhythm, to meld with the  
dozens of bodies pressed against his on the dance floor. He learned long ago to not care who it  
was that made him forget the loneliness, the pain that he hides behind that smirk he wears, a  
smirk that speaks of experience and heartbreaking potential. The smirk reminds him, at times, of  
his mortal enemy, Schuldich, and that scares him. He does not want to become something  
completely empty, living off of the pain of others. He does not want to become a sharp tool for  
others to use. He knows that he likes his individuality, and yet he is forcing himself to lose  
it nonetheless, forging a new identity from the ideal man that he will never be.  
  
He does not belong here, in this world of young faces and young bodies and empty minds. He  
belongs in a place where he can better himself, where he can use the talents he has, where he  
can learn things that interest him. By all rights, he should be in graduate school right now,  
learning a trade. He takes time out of his day to wonder occasionally why he isn't there,  
whether a part-time job partner really meant that much to him that he would want to drop out of  
the society that wrought her death as completely as he has. He wonders if it was worth it to  
learn how to take it out in the blood he spills.  
  
//But on the telephone line I am anyone  
I am anything I want to be  
I could be a supermodel or Norman Mailer  
And you wouldn't know the difference  
Or would you?//  
  
He is empty inside, a bitter young man who has nothing to hold onto but a woman who has been  
dead a year and a half. No one understands him; no one tries. If someone made the effort,  
perhaps he would not feel quite so lonely about it. But no one has even tried to survey his  
pain, much less take some of it and heal it. Even the three he fights with, kills with, flirts  
with, teases daily, have not even begun this process of bringing back to him at least some of  
what he was. They are too busy with their own pain for that. Stone-faced Aya deals with his pain  
alone, completely alone, taking limbs off anyone who even begins to try to get close to him.  
Sunshiny Ken and cheerful Omi confide in each other, seeming to forget that anyone else around  
might still have a soul that needs company, even if said soul cannot be saved completely.  
  
//In Santa Monica, all the people got  
Modern names like Jake and Mandy  
And modern bodies too//  
  
And he hates it all, hates the life he lives, hates the life he left behind, hates himself for  
not being stronger than he is. If he could just reach out and touch someone - but no. No, fate  
has not even left him that option. He cannot show someone what he is, find out what they are,  
say, this is the way I am, and this is the way you are, and I think we could change the ways  
that we are for each other. He has to have an entire section of his life hidden away from anyone  
he could possibly come to care about. After all, being an assassin in any form, even a  
government agent, isn't exactly legal. Being supposedly under the soil in a graveyard somewhere  
doesn't help that either. There's so much he can't share with anyone but the three he lives  
with, and they don't care. He doesn't know if anyone does. But he finds himself too weak to part  
the veil and find out.  
  
//In Santa Monica, on the boulevard,  
You'll have to watch those inline skaters  
Or they'll knock you down//  
  
There are times when he has tried to change things for himself for the good or the bad. The  
drugs attest to that. The alcohol attests to that. The barely visible scars along his wrists  
attest to that. His time spent with a woman he thought was dead attests to that. But the changes  
were always swept out of the way by the plans destiny, it seems, has laid out for him. Destiny  
wants him to die alone. Why would anything want that for him? He is a smart man, a caring man, a  
handsome man, a decent man. There are worse people out there that deserve that end more than he  
does. Why should this happen this way? Why does he deserve this?  
  
//I never felt so lonely,  
Never felt so out of place  
I never wanted something more than this//  
  
He has so much pain hidden inside of him. More pain than Aya, perhaps; more pain than Ken, for  
certain. He does not know he if can yet claim the level of dysfunction Omi has reached, with his  
forced memory loss of his past, and the strange, twisted story of his family. After all, he  
never fell in love with his sister. But the pain of not being able to protect a woman whom he  
did not love as he should have, the guilt of the same, the pain of barely remembering an abusive  
family, the pain of growing up alone, is too much for him. Asuka was the first woman who had  
cared, who had tried to understand who he was, who had made him feel not so alone. He did not  
realize what he was losing until he had already lost it - a confidante of the deepest sort, a  
soul that cared for his. He could have stopped her from dying, he feels, even though logically  
he knows that a man bleeding from a bullet wound to the gut is capable of very little. His guilt  
over that, his pain over losing her, and his want of the same person who cares, who understands,  
who makes him feel not-so-alone, make up what he is.  
  
//But on the telephone line I am anyone,  
I am anything I want to be  
I could be a supermodel or Norman Mailer  
And you wouldn't know the difference//  
  
He has studied society carefully to find out what they want in a man to look at, a man to date,  
a man to marry, and a man to rise to the top of society. For the last two, they want a  
conservative soul, unobtrusive, probably wearing thick glasses, smart, spending more time with  
his calculator and his computer than his loved ones. For the first, they want someone wild, a  
slacker who smokes, drives a convertible, can make it with anyone. The face he has created for  
himself out of this image is of the first type, a rebellious young man who holds charm and looks  
but nothing to keep people to him. He has made himself the sort of person that can do anything  
and not be thought of. If they knew, they would simply shake their heads, admit that the move  
was typical of him, and ignore it. This mask he has created he can hide behind quite well  
because he can playact at being something completely different from what he is. He does not want  
them to know what he really is. Why would he? None of them would care. If none of them care, he  
would rather not know. He would rather cherish the hope that someone someday will care enough to  
peel his mask back and find out who he is behind it. He would rather hope that someone, someday,  
will figure out that behind the smile he is crying.  
  
//On the telephone line, I am any height  
I am any age I want to be  
I could be a caped crusader, or space invader  
And you wouldn't know the difference  
Or would you?//  
  
This is what he is; this is what he pretends to be. All he wants, more than anything, is someone  
to change the way things are for him. He cannot do it himself. He is not strong enough to. He  
has tried. He wants someone to care enough to listen to him. If he could get anyone to do that,  
they would hold his very being in their hands. He does not want a lover; he has had more than  
enough of those in the search for this. He wants someone to care for him, someone he can care  
for. He wants someone who would be able to see through his mask to who he really is. He wants  
someone who could make him talk about it. He wants someone who wants to understand him. It isn't  
so much to ask, really.  
  
//Or would you?//  
  
And so he hides from the world, waiting endlessly for someone who will care.  
  
Perhaps someone will one day.  
  
  
OWARI  
  
  
More depressing Yohji, as I said... I hope you all don't mind. I love him dearly. He almost  
feels more like my character than anyone else's - but Takehito-san, I KNOW he belongs to you!  
  
So let me know what you think, ne? Review, or email at makochan384@hotmail.com. I always prefer  
emails, but I'm sort of grounded at the moment and can't respond to them. However, Lady Yaoi,  
Aya, and especially Aoe (YAY!!!!! AOE LIKES ME!!!!!!! ^cheeses^), THANK YOU!!!!!! I LOVE YOU  
ALL!!!!!!!!!!!! 


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